How Ars readers cope with bad Netflix and YouTube performance

VPNs, DNS, and... DSL? If only we could just get some broadband competition.

One of the most common complaints from Internet users is how slow streaming video services like YouTube and Netflix can be. There are various reasons for bad performance, ranging from technical glitches to business conflicts, but when low-quality video is the result, it's frustrating and hard to avoid.

That doesn't mean that users can't try a variety of methods to speed up that video. This week, we asked Ars readers to share their streaming video strategies, and we got more than 100 responses. Here are some of the most interesting.

VPNs, DNS, and proxy servers

As we've written, a VPN (virtual private network) or third-party DNS (Domain Name System) service can improve streaming performance by routing traffic away from congested links. This can also have the opposite of its intended effect because it tends to force video traffic over a longer path by distance. But numerous users said the strategy has indeed worked wonders for them.

"It's effectively unusable during those time periods," rodalpho wrote. "I tried blocking their cache CDNs (206.111.0.0/16 and 173.194.55.0/24), no dice. I tried switching to Google DNS and easyDNS, no improvement. Activating a VPN immediately solved my problem, but I don't want to pay for a VPN just to make YouTube work. I want Time Warner to fix the problem. It's been over a year, and they haven't, and I don't expect them to. So I just don't use YouTube during prime time."

Similarly, MatthiasF of Maryland routes traffic through a proxy service to improve YouTube quality. "The very few times YouTube messes up for me here in Maryland, I use a proxy located in Texas," MatthiasF wrote. "It seems like the connections to the Northeast YouTube servers (South Carolina) get congested every so often, but the ones in Oklahoma are usually fine (probably because of the hour difference and far fewer people)."

Gordon942 of Berkeley, CA reports using a VPN to fix Netflix on Comcast. "Between about 4:30pm and midnight, Netflix on Comcast will only play extremely low quality SD and will buffer for a long time about every 30 seconds," the commenter wrote. "To fix this, I signed up for a VPN from Private Internet Access. It's about $7 a month, and it totally fixes the problem. With the VPN active, I get instantaneous HD with no buffering any time of the day."

Netflix users on Comcast should start seeing better quality even without a VPN because of a new agreement between the companies to exchange traffic directly.

Ars commenters noted that connecting to a VPN on a computer is easy enough, but getting all video-capable devices onto a VPN may require reconfiguring a router and can thus be a hassle.

Eurynom0s, a Verizon FiOS user in Washington, DC, wrote that a VPN improves Netflix on a computer, but it's still unwatchable on a TV not connected to a VPN. "Last night I had to use Netflix from my computer on my TV to get a watchable streaming quality despite having a smart TV with a Netflix app (since it's a 60", the shitty quality is ESPECIALLY noticeable, plus last night it kept pausing to rebuffer, too). When I plugged my computer in instead, I instantly got better quality," the commenter wrote. "Now I'm going to have to dig out my old Linksys router with Tomato on it and try to figure out if I can set it up as a VPN tunnel for the TV. At least I already had the VPN and already own a router, but it's still unbelievable that I have to waste my time setting all this up just to get what I'm already paying for."

The extra effort is worth it, says Borzwazie, a Comcast user, who set up a wireless router to connect all devices on the local network to Private Internet Access. "The difference is night and day," Borzwazie wrote. "I'm actually getting the bandwidth I pay for now with Comcast (25 down/5 up). Netflix and YouTube run great, and I can actually stream HD now. Web browsing is snappy. Steam downloads are fast. There's occasional variability, but overall I am very satisfied. If this change isn't evidence of the network shenanigans at Comcast, I don't know what is."

Getting more advanced

Other users got a little more complicated. DemBones79, a Verizon FiOS user in Maryland, "manually block[ed] the YouTube IP ranges specified in the Mitch Ribar post, though I did it in the router itself. This helped a lot for YouTube (though there's still the occasional troublesome video)." DemBones79 also "manually specified the OpenDNS IP addresses for my DNS server in the router." This has apparently helped speed up browsing on some websites, but Netflix is still troublesome.

Geese, a commenter in Virginia on Verizon FiOS, wrote that "Netflix is damn near unusable during late primetime (8pm EST to 1am EST). I pay for a 75 down/35 up connection because I run some company testing/lab servers in a basement rack. I can download anything at 5MB/s whenever I want, but streaming from Netflix is like snorkeling with a coffee stirrer whenever it's prime time."

Geese's solution? "I'm looking into a VPS [a virtual private server hosted in a data center] with a proxy to get around whatever they're doing. It's ridiculous."

On the easier side, some users have installed browser extensions with success. Extensions that add an option to YouTube for downloading videos are particularly useful, wrote grimlog.

"The easiest way to beat slow YouTube streaming speeds? Use any of the myriad browser extensions for downloading YouTube videos," grimlog wrote. "It's often the only way I can watch long-form content posted on YouTube. On Comcast, videos often freeze for over a minute as it buffers, but if I download that video instead, I can max out my DL speeds… I don't know why streaming speeds are so much slower than downloading speeds, but sometimes, it's a night-and-day difference."

A couple of readers reported that YouTube also runs better in HTML5 instead of Flash. YouTube viewers can request to be served HTML5 content when available.

DSL and competition

While we've seen that even customers with nominally fast cable or fiber Internet service can have problems with streaming video, some of our readers said Internet users shouldn't discount the quality of DSL.

"I recently switched this week from a standard DSL line from AT&T at 6Mbps down to the U-verse Fiber Optic service from AT&T at 12Mbps down. I hate it," wrote Look_alive. "Prior to switching, I had zero problems streaming Netflix in HD via Roku on my anemic DSL plan. From the moment I switched to the 'faster, better, stronger' AT&T U-verse 12Mbps service, I have yet to stream any Netflix content in HD."

After examining customer forums where other people complained of the same problem, Look_alive tried several potential fixes, including third-party DNS services, but hasn't been able to play Netflix in HD yet.

While DSL's advertised speeds generally aren't huge, we've seen that nominal speeds often aren't a predictor of actual streaming quality. The VPN and DNS examples show that the path video takes across the Internet is just as (if not more) important than the megabits per second promised by an ISP.

"If your cable provider can't deliver Netflix streams fast enough, you should give DSL a shot," wrote commenter James C. Smith. "I have 6Mbps DSL and I don't have trouble streaming HD from Netflix and YouTube. DSL may not be as fast as cable promises to be, but DSL is faster than cable often turns out to be."

Several commenters noted the paucity of competition in the US, where Internet users are lucky if they can choose from even two broadband providers. It's not that way everywhere, as UK resident Aahjnnotpointed out. Unfortunately, this solution isn't available to every Internet user:

From the UK here, but when my Virgin broadband failed to stream HD video and their customer service team failed to fix it, I found a very simple solution that was 100% effective.

I switched providers.

Promoted Comments

A DNS server in a different region will point you to different servers on a particular distributed network and possibly give you a better connection if the servers in your region are slow due to congestion. For example if you live on the east coast and Netflix's east coast servers are clogged with traffic using a DNS based in Seattle will point you to a server in that region which may be less congested.